1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to method of fabricating a semiconductor device and, more particularly, to a method for fabricating a recessed-gate metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) transistor device having a self-aligned arc-shaped trench bottom channel.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With the continuing shrinkage of device feature size, the so-called short channel effect (SCE) due to shrunk gate channel length has been found that it can hinder the integrity of integrated circuit chips. Many efforts have been made for solving this problem, for example, by reducing the thickness of the gate oxide dielectric or by increasing the doping concentration of source/drain. However, these approaches adversely affect the device reliability and speed of data transfer on the other hand, and are thus impractical.
A newly developed recessed-gate MOS transistor becomes most promising. In the filed of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), the recessed-gate technology may be used to improve the integrity of the memory chip. Typically, the recess-gate MOS transistor has a gate insulation layer formed on sidewalls and bottom surface of a recess etched into a substrate, a conductive filling the recess, contrary to a planar gate type transistor having a gate electrode formed on a planar surface of a substrate.
However, the aforesaid recess-gate MOS transistor has some shortcomings. For example, the recess for accommodating the gate of the MOS transistor is etched into a semiconductor wafer by using conventional dry etching methods. It is so difficult to form recesses having the same depth across the wafer that a threshold voltage control problem arises. Further, as the width of the recess shrinks, the channel length is reduced, resulting in short channel effect.